Secretary of State Alex Padilla speaks at California State University, Long Beach during a small town-hall style forum in Long Beach on Friday, September. 14, 2018. The meeting focused on the importance of student voter participation in the Nov. 6 election and instilling a culture of civic engagement through 2030. (Photo by Brittany MurrayPress-Telegram/SCNG)

On Aug. 9, the California Department of Finance finally released the long-awaited audit report on the Department of Motor Vehicles’ implementation of the California New Motor Voter Program.

Some lawmakers had called for the audit to be conducted by the state auditor, but that office is independent and does a very thorough job of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, so the DMV audit was assigned to the Department of Finance.

The DOF issued a $417,000 contract to Ernst & Young to conduct an independent assessment. But the levers of political control are evident in sentences like these: “The scope of the fifth deliverable, the Validation Report, was limited to providing the results of data comparisons only and did not include an evaluation of the results. The scope did not include an explanation of these results or whether they were significant.”

Those of us who are not bound by the limitations of the contract’s scope can turn to Appendix D of the Business Process Assessment report, titled “Voter Registration Criteria.”

“Below is a table describing the current validation of registration data obtained via the California New Motor Voter program against the California Voter Registration Eligibility Requirements,” the auditors wrote.

Four eligibility requirements are listed. The first is, “A citizen of the United States.”

Under the “DMV California New Motor Voter Data Validation approach,” the validation is “None.” Added in parentheses is a note that there is a “self-attestation by the public via a signed affidavit at DMV.”

In the next column in the table, the auditors describe the “Secretary of State (SOS) VoteCal Data Validation of California New Motor records.” (VoteCal is the state’s voter registration database.)

The SOS validation of the DMV’s data for the first requirement to register to vote, “A citizen of the United States,” is “None.”

If you were to ask Secretary of State Alex Padilla about this, he would tell you that it’s exactly the same validation process that’s used for any other process of voter registration in the state, whether online or on a paper form: The prospective voter states under penalty of perjury that he or she is a U.S. citizen.

There’s no validation and there’s no known enforcement. It’s all on the honor system.

When people who are permanent legal residents of California, but not citizens, go to the DMV to complete transactions for a driver’s license, state ID card or change of address, the California New Motor Voter system will automatically register them to vote unless they attest that they are not eligible or affirmatively decline to be registered.

How often are non-citizens inadvertently registered to vote in the chaos at the DMV? We don’t know, because nobody validates the data on citizenship.

According to the state, six people who voted in the 2018 primary were ineligible people who were registered to vote at the DMV. Two of them voted in the general election.

The Sacramento Bee reported that these registrations have since been canceled, and nobody’s being charged with a crime.

But the crime is that nobody is verifying eligibility to vote in California.

Citizenship is only one of the requirements to register to vote. California residency is another. How is that verified?

According to the auditors, the data validation at the DMV is “None.” At the Secretary of State’s office, the data validation of California residency on the DMV registrations is “None.”

It’s on the honor system.

There are two more requirements for eligibility to register to vote, “18 years old or older on Election Day” and “Not currently in prison or on parole for a felony conviction.” How is this data validated?

The validation of a prospective voter’s age is “None” at the DMV and “None” at the SOS, other than the self-attestation, although the auditors note that DMV technicians in the field offices are “trained to enter the name and date of birth from the actual documents that are acceptable birth date legal presence documents.” So when those documents are necessary, and accurate, there’s that.

Otherwise, the only data for validation of voter eligibility in the entire system comes from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Every month, the department sends new and updated felon information to the Secretary of State’s registration database, VoteCal, which automatically sends potential “voter-to-felon” matches to the counties. County officials are responsible for making the final determination of a match and canceling the registrations of ineligible voters.

Ernst & Young’s investigation into errors in the DMV’s New Motor Voter system has now produced an official report confirming what state officials have not been eager to advertise: Eligibility to vote in California is completely unverified. The system is wide open to fraud.

A foreign government, an out-of-state person or group or an in-state person or group could use the SOS online system or paper forms to register hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of phony or ineligible voters. Nobody verifies identity, citizenship, age or whether the address is really someone’s residence. And because voters can have a separate mailing address, ballots can be sent anywhere, even overseas.

The latest changes to state election law make the system even more vulnerable to fraud. In 2020, local polling places will be replaced by vote centers that will be open for 11 days. A registered voter can go to any vote center in the county to request a new ballot or make changes to his or her voter registration, such as address or party affiliation. And then the voter can cast a ballot immediately.

While that is convenient for a legitimate registered voter, it is also a vulnerability to election interference and fraud. Voter registration lists are public information. Anyone can walk into a vote center, give a name and address that matches a voter registration, make changes to the registration, get a ballot and vote.

Absolutely no identification is required, or even accepted, in connection with these activities. The ballots go into the box and they will be counted. There is no way to identify or remove those ballots later if fraud is uncovered.

And there is no way to prevent fraud, or to detect it. The state of California is intentionally refusing to validate voter eligibility data.

On page 3 of the Business Process Assessment Report, the Executive Summary lists recommendations that “should be reviewed and considered for implementation.” Recommendation No. 9 is “real-time validation of voter eligibility using definitive data sources.”

That’s an excellent idea. Call Gov. Gavin Newsom and your state representatives (findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov) and ask them when we’re going to start doing it.

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